


crease-corner photographs

by nimrodcracker



Category: Shadowrun: Dragonfall
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, F/F, Grief/Mourning, Relationship Status: It's Complicated, Slice of Life, Some Glory/Protagonist if you squint
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-09
Updated: 2018-12-09
Packaged: 2019-09-05 17:01:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,918
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16814788
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nimrodcracker/pseuds/nimrodcracker
Summary: It takes Glimmer three tries before she musters the courage to watch Schäfer's dossier on her.





	crease-corner photographs

Glimmer tried sleeping. She really did. Anything for a new day, and another chance to begin again.

All she got was tossing and turning on a bunk suddenly too hard, too lumpy versus the back-alley pavements she'd huddled on those lonely nights in barrens best left forgotten. Closing her eyes, she'd find herself assailed by images of Monika lifeless in her arms, her groans rattling in her ears, her...

Glimmer keeps her eyes wide open.

It's only been hours since Harfeld Mansion. Of _course_ it's still fresh. She can still smell the grotesque mix of burnt flesh, blood, sweat... _electric_ ; like a bad stench clinging to her skin, regardless of how hard she'd scrubbed in the shower. Thinking about how Monika's still lying there, abandoned and alone, because Glimmer didn't--

Glimmer slides off her top bunk and shrugs on her jacket, fingers too cold without the comforting burn of mage fire. Eiger's bunk is empty, just neatly folded blankets and a pillow arranged in line with the angles of the frame. Military orderliness. It still rubs Glimmer wrong, ruffles her skin like an unwanted touch, but better that than having a furious troll around. Glimmer pictures Eiger perched somewhere high, snow falling, stewing in silence with that fearsome grimace of hers, tusk-teeth and all. Maybe.

Dietrich is passed out on the couch outside, Herr Amsel nowhere to be seen - probably sleeping in the bedroom Glimmer couldn't accept, not tonight. Dante sleeps curled beside the shaman, fur rippling with each breath. The safehouse is... quiet, a tense silence that pricks like broken needles. This is why she gave up running against the Grey Wolves in Austria. It's why she stopped smuggling escaped sweatshop slaves across the border to Germany, to accept Monika's offer to return to F-State. There's a twinge to the air that makes her pointed ears twitch; bad feelings, bad memories. Bad juju, as her wizard mentor would say. As if the ley lines themselves have been blighted.

It's- Glimmer can't stay inside; she needs to get _out_.

Glimmer thinks of getting Turkish coffee from Altug, soykaf that's closer to a home she only remembers in fragments. It'll fill her empty stomach, ward off the frigid Berlin nights biting her bones, but- drek, that's not going to help. On the doorstep to the nightlife outside, Glimmer realises it's not that.

No, it's this: the nagging desire to see Monika again. Not the face burned to the back of her eyelids, but the face of her dreams. The face from better times.

She goes back in. Plants herself at Monika's terminal and boots it up, unlocks it with a passcode that she guesses - correctly. Goes through everything: the messages, Shadowland BBS profile... everything. Even the dossiers - until she sees her name.

Not Glimmer. _Tay_. Shorthand for _Taenaran Aydın_.

Monika remembered. Of course she did.

Glimmer's hand shakes over the cursor; shakes, and shakes. Limbs that don't feel like hers, more cyberware than essence, but she hasn't a sliver of chrome on her - her, a mage? It's anathema.

Moments pass. Two. Then ten minutes.

Something rumbles somewhere, the heavy bumps of boots on metal floor, and Glimmer takes that as a cue to shut off the terminal and hustle back into her bunk, just as she hears Eiger stomp in with a curse under her breath.

Glimmer can't watch Monika's trideo on her, not tonight.

* * *

"Why'd you come back, then? Monika told me you had a good thing going in Vienna. The kind of runs I wished I could still do, but these bones ain't what they used to."

Glimmer motions for the bottle, and Dietrich hands it over. Gulps down once, twice, before shaking off the bite that comes with synthenol. She abstains, usually, preferring soykaf to booze 'cause drunk wizards are a danger to everyone, but tonight...

"What can I say? Berlin's still home, and Vienna isn't. Only so long you can stay away before the homesickness creeps in."

"Just that? Thought you returned because of Schäfer. Doesn't take much to know you and her had history. She only mentioned you in passing before, but when you accepted her offer to run together again... Couldn't have feigned that skip in her step, boss, 'cause I hadn't seen her that happy in a while. So, question is - what kind of history? If you're up for sharing."

"Like you said, I had a good life running corporate espionage. Yet, I came back. Because of her." Glimmer bites her lip, digs her teeth into flesh till it hurts. "Thought that said everything."

Dietrich stills, hearing the sudden terseness in her tone. He nods, expression turning mournful. "It sure does, boss."

* * *

Things happen.

They pick up a decker, Blitz, slimy as he feels, because their crew is one less a decker and it's always handy to have a Matrix novahot on their runs. Corporate runs without deckers means less nuyen or paydata to suck from the corps and a longer road to the _fifty_ thousand that Alice demands; a sum that better be worth it. Glimmer's sanity rests on it - no doubt, the rest of the crew's, too. Blitz is a painful reminder of who he isn't.

Eiger apologises, too. Herr Amsel debriefs everyone after their run at Das Kesselhaus, and the ex-KSK operative pulls Glimmer aside not a moment later. She still sniffs at Glimmer strutting into combat in naught but a ballistic-lined _suit_ \- but they're okay. Glimmer thinks. Too bad it took Winters bent over backwards in agony for Eiger to believe her, but.

Glimmer understands. She's mad pissed, too. Would've gone ballistic like Eiger if not for the fact that she had a team to bail from Harfeld before she got 'em all killed, feet away from Monika's body. Best way to honour a fr- lov-- _drek._

Glimmer sighs, reaching into the pocket of her cargo pants. Feels around rings, credsticks, before her fingers curl around the crinkled edges of a photograph. She pulls it out.

In the low-light of the safehouse, legs dangling over the edge of her top bunk, Glimmer smoothens out a photo of her and Monika. It catches and drags against the fabric of her handwraps, and Glimmer plucks at the errant threads.

She smiles at the pair of shadowrunners hugging one-armed, grins stretched wide. Monika's head buried in the crook of her neck, because elves are taller and Monika's short for a human... but that was Monika's excuse, Glimmer recalls with a smile.

The photograph was taken in the summer of 2050, just before Glimmer left for Austria. Before Glimmer learnt how disastrously shadowrunning could go. She'd had crew die on her before, of course, but none were on her level. On Monika's level. They were supposed to be untouchable.

"What _were_ we, _mein Liebling_? It didn't matter to us, back then. Now..."

Glimmer thinks of their kiss at Harfeld, in the dark of the van and away from prying eyes of the crew. She'd felt uneasy in the drive there, telling Monika as much while choosing weapons from the back of the van.

_Things'll be fine, Tay,_ Monika had said, before shutting her up with a kiss and a smile. _With you around, I know I will._ And being the fool she was, Glimmer had believed her. Believed her enough to melt into her, Harfeld looming over them.

Glimmer shakes off those memories with a haggard breath. "At least you died knowing you mattered to me."

Glory's quiet in the 'fresher, door firmly closed. Whatever she does in there - laundry, sometimes, but staring at a wall mostly - she does it without a squeak, the light peeking through the gap between the door and the floor the only sign that she's there. Raucous laughter spills in from the common room; Blitz and Dietrich having it on with booze, while Eiger's checking their inventory in the storeroom half the safehouse away. Glimmer figures she has some moments of peace to confront Monika's idea of her. In private.

Monika's always joked about dying first and wanting Glimmer to officiate her funeral. Elves live longer than humans on average, and who better to do it than a trusted friend?

But this? Too soon. Too fucking soon.

* * *

CALL LOG //

[03:22:32/10-9-53]

_Hey Tay, you still running?_

_Always. No one's managed to stop me. Yet._

_Got a job, if you wanted to pop back._

_For you? It doesn't even have to be a job._

_You really know how to make girl a feel wanted._

_And showing her a good time. Remember when we were almost caught with my hands in your pants on that paydata run?_

_And if I remember right, you started it, you tease. But Tay, I know you. There's something else, right?_

_Always could read me, huh? You're right. I can't do this anymore. Vienna's getting to me. I need to center myself for a while._

_Come home. I'll be waiting._

[q cmd: AUTO-DELETE]

* * *

_"Tay. Or Glimmer, what she calls herself these days - it suits her. My darling wizard with sparky fingers. My secret weapon. I've run enough with her to know that she's trustworthy. Good in a fight, too. But beyond all of that, it's good just to see her again. There aren't many people left from the old days. Far too few. And Tay... well, she was always the best of 'em."_

"You alright, Glimmer?"

Glimmer flinches. Obviously, she's lost time, lost herself in the cadence of Monika's voice - but for how long? "Wiz, Glory. All chill."

Glory tilts her head at her, her cold eyes drifting to fix on Glimmer's face. "You have tears on your cheeks."

"Eh." Glimmer hastily swipes 'em away with the back of her hand, embarrassed that firstly, she hasn't noticed, and second, _Glory_ of all people is the one catching her like this. And she does what she does when caught unawares: babble. "Berlin nights, amirite? Fragging mess. Least Vienna was warmer."

Well, better Glory than Eiger, anyhow. Wait, is Eiger in her bunk?

"I know you sat here yesterday, staring at the screen. Have been, these few nights. You were not subtle." Glory, standing in the middle of the door to the 'fresher, light harsh against the lines of her silhouette. Somehow, it softens her hard expression, paints warmth on porcelain cheeks where there used to be none. Glimmer finds herself staring at that. "Monika was something to you."

Glory is astute; uncomfortably so that Glimmer has a lie itching to slip off her tongue as a knee-jerk, but- " _Mein Schatz._ She was beloved to me. Wasn't she, to all of us? In so many different ways."

"She is," Glory answers quickly, flatly. She heads back inside the 'fresher. "Get some sleep, Glimmer. You look terrible."

"Are you? Gonna sleep, I mean."

Glory halts, looks over her shoulder with a dead smile. "I tried."

"I could sit with you if you wanted, keep you company. We don't have to talk. Whatever you're comfortable with. I don't-" Glimmer blinks, slowly. Takes the time to breathe. "I'm not that sleepy anymore."

"It's fine, Glimmer. After our talk today, I need to be alone." Again, that mysterious quirk to her lips, the not-smile that Glimmer finds out of place - but Glory stops that as fast as she starts it. "But thank you for offering."

Glimmer finger-salutes her with a smirk. "Anything for _m_ \- a friend."

If Glory hears her slip, she doesn't make note of it. Because Glimmer doesn't understand where that came from, to begin with.

**Author's Note:**

> monika deserved better 2k18


End file.
